Social Biases Analyzed

Social Biases
Prepare a response in which you analyze the concept of social bias. As a part of your analysis, address the following items:

1) Define and explain the concepts of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination.
2) Explain the differences between subtle and blatant bias.
3) Describe the impact of bias on the lives of individuals.
4) Analyze and evaluate one strategy that could be effective in overcoming social biases.

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Social Biases

(1) Define and explain the concepts of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination.

Several sub-disciplines of Social Psychology exist that include social cognition, which is focused on schemas (set of rules) used to understand and interpret the world and how individuals function in the world. As a discipline, Social Psychology is the study of individuals' attitudes and how they form or develop (Baron, Byrne, and Branscombe, 2006)... One topic that is studied has been on the judgments people make of others such as the biased perception of others. Bias has been "normalized" as pervasive and an accepted feature of American culture (Latting, 1990)". According to Latting, everyone in the nation's culture develops bias against some group at some time. Bias is conceptualized as a "judgment of others in the absence of information about them". Based on this definition, as Latting points out, bias serves to reframe prejudice as an "attitudinal problem based on non-critical thinking that requires honest cognitive self-education" (p. 36).

Other definitions of prejudice has been presented in the literature beginning with Gordon Allport's (1979) definition of prejudice as "thinking ill of others without warrant:" (p.197). Further, according to Allport (1979), stereotypes emerged in a way that distinguished between social groups by assigning them to categories that were 'weighted' with negative characteristics. In their description, Byrne, Baron and Branscombe (2006) referred to discrimination as "Differential [negative] behaviors directed toward members of social groups (e.g., focused on differences). They distinguished the concept from prejudice and stereotyping by referring to prejudice as "negative aspects toward the members of specific social groups; and stereotyping as cognitive frameworks that influence the processing of social information about specific groups [negative beliefs are based on the group's ...

Solution Summary

This solution analyzes the concept of social bias relative to prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination.